President Ghani to meet his US counterpart tomorrow

KABUL (Pajhwok): President Ashraf Ghani is all set to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump on Thursday and the two leaders are expected to confer on bilateral relations, terrorism and building capacity of the Afghan forces, a presidential spokesman said Wednesday.

Shah Hussain Murtazavi, acting spokesman for the president, told a press conference here that President Ghani would be meeting the United Nations Secretary General and leaders of some countries.

He said President Ghani, who is in New York to attend the 72nd UN General Assembly meeting, was scheduled to call on President Donald Trump on tomorrow (Thursday).

Ghani, heading a high-level delegation, arrived in New York on Sunday. In his speech to the UN assembly, the Afghan leader praised the new American policy for Afghanistan and South Asia and renewed his offer of dialogue with the Taliban and Pakistan.

“With President Trump's recent announcement of his strategy to counter terror and stabilize South Asia, Afghanistan's enduring partnership with the United States and the international community has been renewed and redirected," Ghani told the audience at the UN headquarters in New York.

He said the new strategy about US military engagement in Afghanistan on conditions rather than timelines provided a certainty over US support for Afghanistan which he said the Afghan people had been seeking "for years."

Ghani sought to link the fight in Afghanistan to the global fight against terrorism. "The future of Afghanistan matters because we are on the front lines of the global effort to eradicate the threat of terrorism," Ghani said.

Murtazavi said the president would also be meeting UNDP head, prime ministers of Georgia, India and England in New York.

He said Ghani and Trump were expected talk about expanding bilateral ties, cooperation in fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and region, and building the capacity of Afghan security forces.